Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
I agree that airless tires are what we need -- and I would like to see this go even farther: to reduce rolling resistance to an absolute minimum, and to make even better use of the regenerative suspension I mentioned above -- I think the tires should have virtually no flex! This "wins" in two ways...
|
I'm not sure that would help:
The pneumatic tire also has the more important effect of vastly reducing rolling resistance compared to a solid tire. Because the internal air pressure acts in all directions, a pneumatic tire is able to "absorb" bumps in the road as it rolls over them without experiencing a reaction force opposite to the direction of travel, as is the case with a solid (or foam-filled) tire. The difference between the rolling resistance of a pneumatic and solid tire is easily felt when propelling wheelchairs or baby buggies fitted with either type so long as the terrain has a significant roughness in relation to the wheel diameter.
Tire - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia